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BOSTON: Harvard University appeared in federal court Monday in a pivotal case in its battle with the Trump administration, as the storied institution argued the government illegally cut $2.6 billion in federal funding.
President Donald Trump’s administration has battered the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university with sanctions for months as it presses a series of demands on the Ivy League school, which it decries as a hotbed of liberalism and antisemitism.
Harvard has resisted, and the lawsuit over the cuts to its research grants represents the primary challenge to the administration in a standoff that is being widely watched across higher education and beyond.
A lawyer for Harvard, Steven Lehotsky, said at Monday’s hearing the case is about the government trying to control the “inner workings” of Harvard. The funding cuts, if not reversed, could lead to the loss of research, damaged careers and the closing of labs, he said.
“It’s not about Harvard’s conduct,” he said. “It’s about the government’s conduct toward Harvard.”
The case is before US District Judge Allison Burroughs, who is presiding over lawsuits brought by Harvard against the administration’s efforts to keep it from hosting international students. In that case, she temporarily blocked the administration’s efforts.
At Monday’s hearing, Harvard asked her to reverse a series of funding freezes. Such a ruling, if it stands, would revive Harvard’s sprawling scientific and medical research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.
A lawyer for the government, Michael Velchik, said the Trump administration has authority to cancel the grants after concluding the funding did not align with its priorities, namely Trump’s executive order combating antisemitism.
He argued Harvard allowed antisemitism to flourish at the university following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel, including protesters camped out on campus chanting antisemitic slogans as well attacks on Jewish students.
“Harvard claims the government is anti-Harvard. I reject that,” said Velchik, a Harvard alumnus. “The government is pro-Jewish students at Harvard. The government is pro-Jewish faculty at Harvard.”
Judge questions basis for government’s findings on antisemitism
Burroughs pushed back, questioning how the government could make “ad-hoc” decisions to cancel grants and do so without offering evidence that any of the research is antisemitic. At one point, she called the government’s assertions “mind-boggling.”
She also argued the government had provided “no documentation, no procedure” to “suss out” whether Harvard administrators “have taken enough steps or haven’t” to combat antisemitism.
“The consequences of that in terms of constitutional law are staggering,” she said. “I don’t think you can justify a contract action based on impermissible suppression of speech. Where do I have that wrong.”
Velchik said the case comes down to the government’s choosing how best to spend billions of dollars in research funding.
Harvard’s lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands from a federal antisemitism task force in April. A second lawsuit over the cuts filed by the American Association of University Professors and its Harvard faculty chapter has been consolidated with the university’s.
The task force’s demands included sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. For example, Harvard was told to audit the viewpoints of students and faculty and admit more students or hire new professors if the campus was found to lack diverse points of view.
Harvard President Alan Garber says the university has made changes to combat antisemitism but said no government “should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Monday’s hearing ended without Burroughs issuing a ruling from the bench. A ruling is expected later in writing.
Harvard faculty, alumni rally against cuts
Several dozen alumni from Harvard joined students and faculty to decry the effort to cut the federal funds, holding up signs reading “Hands Off Harvard,” “Strong USA Needs Strong Harvard” and “Our Liberty Is Not For Sale.”
Anurima Bhargava, who wrote the amicus brief on behalf of more than 12,000 fellow Harvard alumni in the case, said the graduates spoke up because “they understand what is at stake here and what the end goal of the government is, to take away our ability to pursue the mission, the freedom and the values that have been the cornerstone of higher education.”
Three Harvard researchers who lost their federal funding spoke about disruptions to the long-term impact of funding on cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other health conditions. They said the cuts could force researchers to go overseas to work.
“Unfortunately, the termination of this research work would mean the end of this progress and the implications are serious for the well-being of Americans and our children into the future,” said Walter Willett, a Harvard professor of epidemiology and nutrition who lost grants that funded long-term studies of men’s and women’s health.
“This is just one example of the arbitrary and capricious weaponization of taxpayer money that is undermining the health of Americans,” he said.
Trump’s pressure campa
ign involves a series of sanctions
The same day Harvard rejected the government’s demands, Trump officials moved to freeze $2.2 billion in research grants. Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared in May that Harvard would no longer be eligible for new grants, and weeks later the administration began canceling contracts with Harvard.
As Harvard fought the funding freeze in court, individual agencies began sending letters announcing the frozen research grants were being terminated. They cited a clause that allows grants to be scrapped if they no longer align with government policies.
Harvard, which has the nation’s largest endowment at $53 billion, has moved to self-fund some of its research, but warned it can’t absorb the full cost of the federal cuts.
In court filings, the school said the government “fails to explain how the termination of funding for research to treat cancer, support veterans, and improve national security addresses antisemitism.”
The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation and argues the government has wide discretion to cancel contracts for policy reasons.
The research funding is only one front in Harvard’s fight with the government. The Trump administration also has sought to prevent the school from hosting foreign students, and Trump has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
Finally, last month, the Trump administration formally issued a finding that the school tolerated antisemitism — a step that eventually could jeopardize all of Harvard’s federal funding, including federal student loans or grants. The penalty is typically referred to as a “death sentence.”
After Monday’s hearing, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to attack Burroughs, calling her a “TOTAL DISASTER.” Burroughs was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
“Harvard has $52 Billion Dollars sitting in the Bank, and yet they are anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America,” he wrote. “Much of this money comes from the USA., all to the detriment of other Schools, Colleges, and Institutions, and we are not going to allow this unfair situation to happen any longer.”

TAVETA, Kenya: The Trump administration’s decision to slash nearly all US foreign aid has left dozens of water and sanitation projects half-finished across the globe, creating new hazards for some of the people they were designed to benefit, Reuters has found.
Reuters has identified 21 unfinished projects in 16 countries after speaking to 17 sources familiar with the infrastructure plans. Most of these projects have not previously been reported.
With hundreds of millions of dollars in funding canceled since January, workers have put down their shovels and left holes half dug and building supplies unguarded, according to interviews with US and local officials and internal documents seen by Reuters.
As a result, millions of people who were promised clean drinking water and reliable sanitation facilities by the United States have been left to fend for themselves.
Water towers intended to serve schools and health clinics in Mali have been abandoned, according to two US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. In Nepal, construction was halted on more than 100 drinking water systems, leaving plumbing supplies and 6,500 bags of cement in local communities. The Himalayan nation will use its own funds to finish the job, according to the country’s water minister Pradeep Yadav.
In Lebanon, a project to provide cheap solar power to water utilities was scrapped, costing some 70 people their jobs and halting plans to improve regional services. The utilities are now relying on diesel and other sources to power their services, said Suzy Hoayek, an adviser to Lebanon’s energy ministry.
In Kenya, residents of Taita Taveta County say they are now more vulnerable to flooding than they had been before, as half-finished irrigation canals could collapse and sweep away crops. Community leaders say it will cost $2,000 to lower the risk – twice the average annual income in the area.
“I have no protection from the flooding that the canal will now cause. The floods will definitely get worse,” said farmer Mary Kibachia, 74.
Trump’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development has left life-saving food and medical aid rotting in warehouses and thrown humanitarian efforts around the world into turmoil. The cuts may cause an additional 14 million deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal. The Trump administration and its supporters argue that the United States should spend its money to benefit Americans at home rather than sending it abroad, and say USAID had strayed from its original mission by funding projects like LGBT rights in Serbia.
With an annual budget of $450 million, the US water projects accounted for a small fraction of the $61 billion in foreign aid distributed by the United States last year.
Before Trump’s reelection in November, the water projects had not been controversial in Washington. A 2014 law that doubled funding passed both chambers of Congress unanimously.
Advocates say the United States has over the years improved the lives of tens of millions of people by building pumps, irrigation canals, toilets and other water and sanitation projects. That means children are less likely to die of water-borne diseases like diarrhea, girls are more likely to stay in school, and young men are less likely to be recruited by extremist groups, said John Oldfield, a consultant and lobbyist for water infrastructure projects.
“Do we want girls carrying water on their heads for their families? Or do you want them carrying school books?” he said. The US State Department, which has taken over foreign aid from USAID, did not respond to a request for comment about the impact of halting the water projects. The agency has restored some funding for life-saving projects, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said American assistance will be more limited going forward. At least one water project has been restarted. Funding for a $6 billion desalination plant in Jordan was restored after a diplomatic push by King Abdullah.
But the funding cuts to other projects mean women in those areas will have to walk for hours to collect unsafe water, children will face increased disease risk and health facilities will be shuttered, said Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, a nonprofit that worked with USAID on water projects in Congo, Nigeria and Afghanistan that were intended to benefit 1.7 million people.
“This isn’t just the loss of aid — it’s the unraveling of progress, stability, and human dignity,” she said.
The United States is not the only country to limit its foreign assistance, citing domestic priorities. Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden have also made cuts.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development projects a 9 percent to 17 percent drop in net official development assistance in 2025, following a 9 percent decline in 2024.
In eastern Congo, where fighting between Congolese forces and M23 rebels has claimed thousands of lives, defunct USAID water kiosks now serve as play areas for children.
Evelyne Mbaswa, 38, told Reuters her 16-year-old son went to fetch water in June and never came home – a familiar reality to families in the violence-wracked region.
“When we send young girls, they are raped, young boys are kidnapped.... All this is because of the lack of water,” the mother of nine said, without providing specifics.
Reuters was unable to confirm her account of such attacks.
A spokesperson for the Congolese government did not respond to requests for comment. In Kenya, USAID was in the midst of a five-year, $100 million project that aimed to provide drinking water and irrigation systems for 150,000 people when contractors and staffers were told in January to stop their work, according to internal documents seen by Reuters. Only 15 percent of the work had been completed at that point, according to a May 15 memo by DAI Global LLC, the contractor on the project.
That has left open trenches and deep holes that pose acute risks for children and livestock and left $100,000 worth of pipes, fencing and other materials exposed at construction sites, where they could degrade or be looted, according to other correspondence seen by Reuters. USAID signage at those sites makes clear who is responsible for the half-finished work, several memos say.
That could hurt the United States’ reputation and potentially give a boost to extremist groups seeking fresh recruits in the region, according to a draft memo from the US embassy in Nairobi to the State Department seen by Reuters. Reuters could not confirm if the memo was sent and if revisions were made to it prior to sending. The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab group based in Somalia has been responsible for a string of high-profile attacks in Kenya, including an assault on a university in 2015 that killed at least 147 people.
“The reputational risk of not finishing these projects could turn into a security risk,” the memo said.
Al Shabab could not be immediately reached for comment. The Kenyan government did not respond to requests for comment.
In Kenya’s Taita Taveta, a largely rural county that has endured cyclical drought and flooding, workers had only managed to build brick walls along 220 meters of the 3.1-kilometer  irrigation canal when they were ordered to stop, community leaders said. And those walls have not been plastered, leaving them vulnerable to erosion.
“Without plaster, the walls will collapse in heavy rain, and the flow of water will lead to the destruction of farms,” said Juma Kubo, a community leader.
The community has asked the Kenyan government and international donors to help finish the job, at a projected cost of 68 million shillings .
In the meantime, they plan to sell the cement and steel cables left on site, Kubo said, to raise money to plaster and backfill the canal.
The county government needs to find “funds to at least finish the project to the degree we can with the materials we have, if not complete it fully,” said Stephen Kiteto Mwagoti, an irrigation officer working for the county.
The Kenyan government did not respond to a request for comment. For Kibachia, who has lived with flooding for years, help cannot come soon enough.
Three months after work stopped on the project, her mud hut was flooded with thigh-deep water.